Thinking Ahead........on Marestails

Thinking Ahead........on Marestails

I have a wooden sign in my office that has the two words THINK AHEAD printed on it. What makes the sign interesting is that as the sign painter neared the end of the board he had to “scrunch” up the word “AHEAD” where the end letter “D” is very small and above the other letters……thus the irony, he did not think ahead.

Many marestails are already emerged now with more, I am sure, yet to come and as producers we do not want to be caught “scrunching” up our “D”.

The marestail that are up at this time are very small and much easier to control with chemicals. Now is the time to take advantage of that and kill as many as you can in those acres that are going to beans, corn, or grain sorghum next spring. At this time in their life OSU thinks that glyphosate is still effective on them but to cover your bets be sure and have about a ½ lbs. of active ingredient phenoxy (24d) in with it. There are also some residual options available for fallow ground such as Basis and Autumn. So as stated in an earlier post, cleaning up those fallow acres now will pay dividends next spring.

Another thought you might kick around early in the battle against marestails is the use of Liberty Link or Liberty Link AND Round Up ready beans instead of just Round Up ready beans. Ignite, the chemical used in LL beans still has good efficacy on marestails and can be used right over the top and if you have both LL and RU beans you still can use the less expensive glyphosate once the mares tails are gone.

Another avenue to take in the battle might be the use of pre-emergents that are effective on your target weed, in any of the crops.

If marestails are or are going to be a problem in your wheat field it is better to go after them now when they are small but.......they may not all be up yet so once again marestails catch us between a rock and a hard place. One new chemical that shows good effect on marestails and many other broad leaf winter annuals in wheat and still let you double crop is Huskie, so I think we can control them in your wheat field.

Although they often get mistaken for other winter annuals at this point, the marestails are emerging…..they are coming…….we need to think ahead.